Show HN: FablePool – pool money behind a prompt, and Fable builds it in public

239 pointsposted 4 hours ago
by matthewbarras

141 Comments

bensyverson

4 hours ago

This idea reads like a joke, but there's something to it.

One feature request: In addition to high-level milestones, it would be cool if a partially-funded project would generate a public, highly detailed implementation plan.

Also, IANAL but MIT is still a license with a copyright holder. I don't think saying "it's MIT, we all own it" is defensible. The courts might view all this code as public domain.

timcobb

an hour ago

I think pooling/donating tokens will be a thing. Not sure if like this, but in some format. The Django project, for example, came out and said they don't want your tokens, but I think a lot of people/projects will (do?) want your tokens.

pitched

28 minutes ago

The good ones all seem to be pointing in the direction of Django. Which, on its own, says a lot about how likely people will care about vibe-coded anything, whether pooled or not.

fny

20 minutes ago

Why not just give a project money and let them decide how to spend?

bitmasher9

15 minutes ago

Donating tokens to a software project is a bit like donating food to a hungry person.

I think it might be beneficial to use blockchain, so that the donor can audit which prompts the token-pool they donated too performed. Perhaps donating tokens can also give you votes on which prompts are entered.

8note

2 hours ago

if fable is writing it, courts my declare that its not even public domain? not a copywrightable work

lwyrup

an hour ago

I don’t know, if the design itself is copyrighted you could argue that the AI is just a bunch of hired workers that built it for extremely low wages.

If I hired a bunch of people to build me a house, and I drafted the architectural plans with the help of a paid architect, neither the architect nor the builders have ownership over the home.

So if a collection of people design something together maybe that has merit, they collectively paid for Anthropic to build it for them…

jonhohle

44 minutes ago

I’m pretty sure copyright office has settled that already. Inly human expression can be copyrighted:

> As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements.

https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

NewJazz

an hour ago

That'll translate across copyright jurisdictions.

fragmede

2 hours ago

The problem with running open source code is the security aspect, but with Mythos running point, how would you distribute revenue is the real question.

Which market is even left after since the sasspocaloypse?

galaxyLogic

43 minutes ago

Maybe the financiers of a project just need it, they need it working, not to generate revenue for them?

oofdere

2 hours ago

yeah it should really be CC0

dietr1ch

2 hours ago

Should it? If it was real world infrastructure, like a bridge it'd be easier to say that it belongs to those who lead the project and those who put down the money

SequoiaHope

an hour ago

The nice thing about a CC0 work is that it belongs to everybody. The leaders of the project have the same rights to use and modify the software as they do with software they have exclusive copyright over. In fact copyright does not grant the rights holder any new rights they did not have, it only restricts the rights of other people.

parliament32

3 hours ago

I love how even the "demo build" doesn't work. https://fablepool.com/projects/7

Rather, it did work at milestone 14, but then regressed at milestone 15, where it changed the link from a wikimedia image to a nonexistent file in /assets (despite still having the "Photo via Wikimedia Commons" caption).

edit: they removed it :^)

CobrastanJorji

2 hours ago

If you check "DEPLOYMENT.md," there is a lengthy list of deployment instructions for the app, and it includes creating an assets folder and putting an image of Claude Shannon in it. There are also other instructions, like "please make a favicon." So I think that bit is valid, the AI is simply farming out work to the human agent.

My question, though, is why the "Live, public build log" only showing up to milestone 3, but the artifacts go up to milestone 15? And there are different index.html pages in the artifacts list, one for milestone 14 and one for milestone 15? Are there different conceptions of "milestone" in here? What's up with that?

matthewbarras

an hour ago

yeah.. deployment.md had instructions to stick a photo there, but rather than explain I just got rid. gonna work on a few examples and fund them so people can see it actually work

GodelNumbering

2 hours ago

"Solve Garbage Collection in C# for HFT · $10.00 raised of est. $200.00 target"

This can't be serious.

Broader point I am making is, what differentiates genuine ideas from the token burn? What happens when the pool exhausts but the task is not done?

asp_hornet

11 minutes ago

From my 10 years in the .net, it seemed C# devs will pretty much do anything to avoid using the right tool for the job or solving the immediate problem at hand.

kevin_thibedeau

2 hours ago

The sarcastic solution is to use C# bindings to a non-GC language. Put all available memory under control of a pool allocator and enjoy the perf gain.

edoceo

28 minutes ago

Similar solution worked for ASP back in 1999. ASP/VBS was terrible slow at string building and Response.Write. Build it in the fast code and then output.

bethekidyouwant

2 hours ago

You keep putting money into the slot and pulling the lever

jimkleiber

an hour ago

But at least collectively pulling it :-)

fragmede

2 hours ago

Real question is, how do you get press for this site after this falls off HN?

fragmede

2 hours ago

It indicates the level of trust people have in the platform, and the combination of the product-platform behavior. If someone with the wherewithal to solve garbage collection for C# for HFT could actually describe why GC in C# was a problem, they wouldn't be asking for $10. But for $10, for something something you're dimly aware of is a problem? I'd throw $10 at some nonsense I read on the Internet.

> What happens when the pool exhausts but the task is not done?

Have a stupider LLM aggregate similar questions.

rickcarlino

an hour ago

We have entered the GoFundMe era of vibe coding.

matthewbarras

an hour ago

goVibeMe

fragmede

an hour ago

shit, that was the quickest $23 I went and bought a a domain name for.

cwnyth

an hour ago

Beat me to it by minutes.

TrueGeek

4 hours ago

So the completed sample was estimated at $0.35, actually cost $0.52, but spend $0.55

This bot is almost as bad as I am at estimating projects.

pitched

3 hours ago

Did it not charge anything for the estimation itself? I wonder what model they’re using for that

MeetingsBrowser

3 hours ago

> Build a completely greenroom, open source AWS

> est. total target $516.00

Lol

NewJazz

an hour ago

Is green room a word? I've heard clean room. And green field. Is it just an amalgamation?

beepbooptheory

an hour ago

Its where the band can hang out before the show.

pitched

3 hours ago

A lot of AWS is built on open-source. This is obviously ignoring hardware costs. I don’t know if it is all that ridiculous anymore. These models are very good at wiring together open-source systems. The world is crazy right now…

thayne

14 minutes ago

AWS has over 200 services, so that's a little over $2 per service. Yeah, a lot of it is built on OSS, but there is a ton of it, and there is also a lot of work involved in building the APIs and web UI, and making it scalable , secure, and resilient.

Now, you might be able to make a version of some small subset of aws services that runs works ok for a small scale for with relatively simple needs, for that many tokens, but I don't think that's what they were going for.

awestroke

8 minutes ago

The hard parts are not based on OSS

LastTrain

an hour ago

You, my friend, have drunk from the goblet of koolaid.

pitched

30 minutes ago

lol but at least in comes in a nice cup then

artisin

2 hours ago

lolz. build aws. no mistakes.

johnnyApplePRNG

29 minutes ago

Excellent idea, I see a few issues though.

First, your server is struggling. It took about 20+ seconds to respond just now, FYI.

Second, it's not obvious to me that I can get my money back if something doesn't pan out / get approved by a certain date from the homepage alone. That might make people hesitant to put anything in if they think it might get locked in there forever if the site dies / you take it down / etc.

jorl17

an hour ago

This is genius! I can already see improved versions of this idea making it big.

fuddle

4 hours ago

I feel like using Fable in the name is a mistake, who knows how long that model will be around.

an0malous

3 hours ago

You could call it aiproductsexchange.com

tartoran

an hour ago

Without the sex change in them : AIProductMarket.com, AIProductHub.com, AIProductMarketplace.com, AIToolMarket.com, AIToolsHub.com

andrewstuart2

3 hours ago

Bold move leaving out the dash between words a la experts-exchange lol.

fragmede

2 hours ago

thatsthejoke.jpg

expertsexchange.com was a site from the before times.

akman

2 hours ago

always have a backup plan (:

CobrastanJorji

2 hours ago

I don't think using the name Fable is wrong, but I think a pool of Fables should be called a Grimm, or possibly an Aesop.

SauntSolaire

34 minutes ago

Perhaps Grimoire?

"A grimoire is a textbook of magic and sorcery. Traditionally, it contains instructions for casting spells, performing divination, creating magical objects like talismans, and summoning supernatural entities such as angels or spirits."

Seems to fit.

vlovich123

4 hours ago

It's how they name classes of models, presumably this implies something about the relative quantization / size of model, not about the specific performance. E.g. Fabel 5 will be better than Opus 5, better than Sonnet 5, etc. The 5 is the version number of the particular iteration / training run at this class of model.

pseudocoup

3 hours ago

I think they mean: I feel like using [Sonnet/Opus/Fable] in the name [URL] is a mistake, who knows how long that model will be around

comboy

2 hours ago

But it sounds like FableFool so it has that going for it.

fragmede

2 hours ago

Even if that product disappears, OpenAI will never Anthropic forget it.

danielrmay

24 minutes ago

This is actually kinda exciting. I threw in an open-source idea I've been playing with, and paid $25. I hope it comes back up soon or I'm going to have to put Fable on building a replacement.

xpct

4 hours ago

Before putting in money to this small anonymous website, I'd love to hear about the people behind the project. There's a single mention of 'Barras Industries', but not much mention about them online, or what else they've worked on.

matthewbarras

an hour ago

fair comment! i'll add a link but we're at barrasindustries.com

jrpt

2 hours ago

Seems similar to open source bounties, which have been tried in the past and never succeeded.

We've seen something like 20+ years of different attempts of voluntary donations to fund open source, and it never worked. Companies barely fund anything voluntarily.

I'm taking the opposite approach with Supported Source (https://supso.org/) which is this: actually force companies to pay to use the project. Sell commercial licenses. Make it mandatory to using your software commercially. This approach works much, much better than voluntary donations.

tgma

2 hours ago

I think there's a categorical difference between paying for long term maintenance voluntarily vs paying for something to exist. The latter works much better as the value prop is clear and you can scratch an itch. Kickstarter is similar.

fragmede

an hour ago

Sooo.. what projects are most highly requested?

brikym

3 hours ago

I think the bottleneck is testing. I want to build a replacement for Zwift, a virtual gym game for bike trainers and treadmills, but testing it could be difficult without a real person on real hardware. How does the LLM know about the hardware protocols and stuff like that.

robbs

3 hours ago

Same way you’d do it without AI. Record sample data, test against that, generate more data, test IRL, record more data, loop until it’s good enough.

itintheory

2 hours ago

They should have called this "WishingWell". I'm wishing them well, but some of these projects are so over the top pie-in-the-sky silly, and funded with $0.25.

sigmar

an hour ago

Does fable write the plan? It says builds run on fable 5, but doesn't specify which AI writes the plan from the prompt.

edit: oh, I see in one of the build logs it says "Planning started (model: claude-fable-5)"

efficax

2 hours ago

it's remarkable how easy it is to identify websites built with the "frontend-design" skill in Claude

zzleeper

2 hours ago

I managed to write one that at least didnt had the font and colors (using 4.5)

Yesterday, I prompted Fable to improve the frontend to make it look different from Claude style, gave detailed examples etc. 15 minutes and $32 dollars (!) later (used cursor lol) it gave me the shittiest more claudiest website ever, basically ignoring everything I asked

madprops

an hour ago

I forgot to fully describe the prompt since I already described it a bit on the title of the submission, which might be a problem. I hope the title of the submission itself is included alongside the prompt when giving instructions to the AI.

raincole

3 hours ago

Man, I really hope this kind of effort could be put into auditing the security situation of open source projects (via Mythos or not.)

Yokohiii

an hour ago

Could anyone post a project to turn that site into phub for LLMs?

qainsights

an hour ago

I got an idea similar to this where the user can donate their tokens instead of dollars.

nine_k

4 hours ago

[flagged]

bcjordan

3 hours ago

This was a pre-LLM YC startup AssemblyMade which was basically this

tptacek

3 hours ago

I don't understand how that would not be a complete joke even if tokens were 2 orders of magnitude more expensive than they are.

skeledrew

4 hours ago

Not affordable, unless the devs are in somewhere like Vietnam. And there's still no way they can build as fast. And still, at that price point, quality would be highly questionable. So yh this doesn't survive beyond the joke stage.

nine_k

3 hours ago

The mention of quality puts it firmly into the joke territory, indeed.

electronsoup

4 hours ago

If you put that behind an API, you could sell the service much like the AI providers

satvikpendem

4 hours ago

And then get sued for fraud and go under, like Builder.ai

fragmede

3 hours ago

What if, and I know this is utterly batshit insane to suggest, but what if we don't lie about what we're doing?

sailingparrot

4 hours ago

Thats called Kickstarter

digitaltrees

2 hours ago

Sort of but in reverse.

If users posted ideas, voted on them and then other people built them then that would be the same. But kickstarter is the producer posting an idea for presale

digitaltrees

2 hours ago

I wonder why that didn’t happen on kick starter. Product hunt was kind of this. It’s actually interesting. Why didn’t this ever happen?

eob

an hour ago

I think because you don't know /which/ developer you're going to get.

One interesting aspect of LLMs is that each one, weights frozen, can be thought of as a single developer whose work you have already evaluated.

The cost of finding, evaluating, and negotiating with a new human is tremenous.

a1o

3 hours ago

It can work for students as a grant

dboreham

2 hours ago

Fable will actually finish the job.

keyle

4 hours ago

This is literally an idea by the primegean on his YouTube under predictions. Self prophecy really with his reach but credit where it's due?

danpalmer

an hour ago

"Build a completely greenroom, open source AWS" – $700

This is engineering theatre (pun intended).

The amount of hubris here is exceptional, the author doesn't even know that it's "clean room" rather than "green room". What does it even mean to build an open source AWS? There are many open source IaaS/PaaS components. Is the author suggesting any hardware design, because that's a critical component.

The only possible result of this is an AWS fanfic. An art project that looks vaguely like a cloud provider on the surface if you squint, but with zero substance to it.

And this criticism has nothing to do with AI. You'd get the same spending 100x that budget on any engineering team.

stonesy88

3 hours ago

Brilliant idea! We need consensus protocols for voting on phases. Similar to the "twitch" plays Pokemon phenomenom.

kasince2k

2 hours ago

anyone who donates gets to vote (?)

chrisss395

2 hours ago

This strikes me as crowd-funded prompt caching, but with humans in the loop.

3adk1a

3 hours ago

Everything turns into a computer game and entertainment.

Maybe add a "Build a worm that shuts down all Anthropic data centers."

pitched

3 hours ago

This, unfortunately, gets flagged for cyber and you would need to be on the unlocked Mythos.

kasince2k

2 hours ago

attach github to this. this is the new way to do opensource i guess

matthewbarras

an hour ago

that's the plan! funded projects will spin up a repo

ProofHouse

an hour ago

Made something very close to this, but not model specific. Ill try to shape it up tonight and tmr and drop it, would be cool to colab!

matthewbarras

an hour ago

full disclosure, it's model specific because the domain was available + bandwagon

evanwolf

3 hours ago

Kinda fun but the approach today is strictly oneshot. Waiting for agentswithwallets to post.

ValentineC

2 hours ago

Has anything been successfully built?

matthewbarras

an hour ago

fablepool didn't exist 24 hours ago .. so not yet

asdfasgasdgasdg

2 hours ago

Fable’s been out for like a day and this site seems more recent.

mannanj

an hour ago

Have any successful funds?

Eridrus

4 hours ago

Hell yeah, $516 for a complete AWS replacement, I'm in lol!

selcuka

2 hours ago

If you look at the milestones it's a small subset of AWS features, but yeah, the estimate is still off.

____tom____

3 hours ago

Reminds of the four college kids that were going to clone Facebook. Turns out it's hard than it looks, if you have never tried it.

ThunderSizzle

17 minutes ago

The coding isn't the hard part. It's the people and networking. Facebook's only moat is HOA boards that think private communication behind Facebook groups somehow equates to public messaging a community...

In other words, once people got on it, it was too late.

MeetingsBrowser

3 hours ago

I wonder how the estimates are being created.

I doubt an LLM would estimate an AWS rewrite to cost $500.

skeledrew

4 hours ago

Is this the new open source?

Uptrenda

2 hours ago

It would work if an engineer steered the pools. But doing this autonomously is a pipe dream.

matthewbarras

an hour ago

there's a job going if you fancy it... pool steersman

alchemist1e9

2 hours ago

Cypherpunks will be proud once there is a version of this cryptocurrency funded to providers receiving the cryptocurrency.

Or maybe there is? or a version where only those funding have access to the results.

morpheos137

20 minutes ago

Lol good place for multiple eyes to view how limited "ai" is.

johnwheeler

4 hours ago

This is a good idea and for features and modifications you can make it so whoever chips in the most money gets more votes.

This is one of those ideas that sounds bad on paper (Like people renting out their houses. But if implemented correctly could get some traction.

colesantiago

4 hours ago

This is a fantastic idea.

There are lots of projects, software that shouldn't be SaaS subscriptions that Fable can build in public that can be free for everyone and also OSS.

anonym29

2 hours ago

Neat project idea, but truly ruined by requiring a google sign-in both to submit new projects and to donate to projects. Dead service to me until that's gone.

Remember, Google aids and abets militaries of governments that the UN has found to be committing genocide.

Weird how people seem to forget this.

thunky

2 hours ago

> Dead service to me until that's gone.

Lets just hope the project is able to soldier on without you.

matthewbarras

an hour ago

Google was just the easiest to implement first. Was planning Github next - or would you prefer smth else?

orliesaurus

3 hours ago

Ok who wants to pool up to build GTA 7? /s

JohnMakin

3 hours ago

"I want an open source AWS" with $500 budget made me guffaw

LearnYouALisp

3 hours ago

"I have a turbofan model, pls build an Airbus" sounds about right

theYipster

an hour ago

All for $670 :)

In all seriousness, I would probably throw $10 at a project to design and implement a modern turbofan FADEC + all of the certification artifacts.

JohnMakin

33 minutes ago

I got downvoted probably for tone which is my bad but what I’m laughing at is this person doesnt seem to understand why people pay for aws, it’s certainly not the laughably bad console or the buggy control plane. it’s the reliability guarantees granted by their massive physical infrastructure that was meant to replace sysadmin’s running racks in a closet and wrangling terrible ansible/chef playbooks.

this literally already exists if you’re willing to maintain your own physical infra, and has for a long time - nothing aws does is that innovative software wise. maybe their managed k8s eliminates a ton of pain, but I dont know. it’s the reliability guarantee + support + not having to maintain physical servers. if youre willing to shirk all that and do it yourself why would you want aws? lol

tldr; was laughing at the xy vibe of the ask